The Glass Harmonica by Russell Wangersky Read Free Book Online Page A

pretty sure that they would want to blame him for everything. Would want to play the familiar old “one bad apple” game and declare the problem solved, even if there was city equipment in garages and basements all over the place. They just didn’t have enough proof—so Tony knew they’d go to the wall for ten sheets of plywood instead.
    Wally Norman took him aside and quietly said he understood, and by way of condolence admitted that he had four of the city’s five-ton hydraulic screw jacks in his own garage if anyone ever took it into their heads to come looking. “Ya haven’t done nothing that anyone else here hasn’t done,” Wally said, smacking a hand down between Tony’s shoulder blades, but Tony didn’t get any particular comfort from the admission.
    â€œI still can’t believe it, Tony,” Helen said quietly while they were sitting together in the small, overheated courtroom, waiting for his case to come up. It had already been a month without pay, a month when, “suspended pending,” he hadn’t driven a truck or been up early enough in the day to see the wonder of the darkness fading into blue. He wasn’t even allowed on city property, and at home, the money had dried up completely, bills now lying unopened on the counter because they were questions that Tony and Helen couldn’t begin to answer.
    â€œI just can’t believe it, that you were stealing. What were you thinking, anyway? And what do you think my father would have said about this?” Helen said. “You always said you wanted him to think well of you.” And something about that whole speech rang funny, even though Tony couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was.
    And she’d been saying that for a month, saying it ever since the court date had been set. He didn’t feel like starting what would have become unstoppable finger pointing, hadn’t once mentioned the gambling machines, didn’t even bother putting words together into something that might seem like an explanation.
    What was he thinking? Her words stuck in his head and nagged at him like a splinter until the moment when he figured it out. When Tony suddenly realized that none of it was about thinking, really. That it was actually a whole bunch of different things, layered in on top of one another. That it was about reacting, about watching and picking up unspoken cues. And he thought that, perhaps, if he’d laid it all out for his father-in-law, Mike Mirren might have understood completely, and smiled, and talked to him for a few minutes about all the things it turns out you really don’t have any choice in after all. And he would have gone back to being dead then, still smiling faintly.
    Eventually, it was Tony’s turn, the whole courtroom waiting and quiet, and there really wasn’t much left to say. And the prosecution lawyer stood up and said they wanted to add extra charges, that since his arrest they’d found the backhoe and the compressor too, and they had three witnesses they wanted to bring forward, and they were talking about charging him as “a career criminal.” Tony smiled a bit when he heard the words, hearing them differently and deciding that it was exactly true, that a career was what had been stolen after all.
    So Tony stood up, leaning over for a moment so his lips were by Helen’s ear, and over her shoulder he could see Ted Greenaway taking important notes in a small notebook for the city’s disciplinary hearing, his arms resting across his large stomach as he wrote, face carefully pulled into a frown.
    â€œI love you, Helen.” Tony said it simply, like that should explain everything. As if those few words made sense of all the rest.
    Then, when he was asked by the judge, Tony found three more simple words. And they explained everything, and yet only a tiny part, too.
    â€œGuilty, your honour.”
    It was simple, just like